By the same token, a 1G acceleration will get you halfway in 1.4 days, or all the way in about 3 days
I remember having a handy-dandy graph for different amounts of multi-G acceleration from "The Ringworld RPG" that really gets you thinking about how fast constant 1G (or 40G!) really is.
(ahem) "doing the math", one week of 1G constant acceleration will get you 182,891,520,000 km (or about 30 thousand times further than pluto!)
My math may be off (:!) but you get the idea!
(and yes, this may not indclude decerlartion... but still! Anyone who is math-enabled, please have at it!)
Christmas == Winter Surplus Exchange?!
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Gifts For Geeks
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A friend metioned this as the original economic motive behind the winter gift activity.
Because each group had some specialty, by gifting your surplus out, everyone is better covered for the rest of long winter.
It makes sense.
Maybe open/free source software will help us get through an upcoming computer/economic 'winter'?
A HOVERING spy craft only 23 centimetres across could soon be flying behind enemy lines to conduct surveillance, or darting about inside buildings to help police find hostage-takers
This is the Toy i want for Xmas -- with the X10 wireless cam!!!!
After my dot-com employer options went to ten times market price(!), I realized the shit I put up with was worse than contributing to a charity.
Where is the OpenSource Charity Job Board. I'd be plenty happy to earn 20-25% less and not feel like I'm working at a f---edcompany but rather doing something to make the world a nicer place.
OSDN/Charity Now!
Please give generously.
Deja: "Before You Buy" is their trademark!
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Deja For Sale
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.Just a brief note about why people with AD(H)D can take a central nervous system stimulant like methyphenidate (ritalin) and it has the reverse effect of creating 'calm'.
The results of studies on people with ADD using PET scans (Positron Emission Tomography) showed that part of the brain was actually working *less* than other parts of the brain. The PET scan is able to detect the use of glucose by cells and the scans showed that regions in the frontal lobes were less active in ADD sufferers than in the people without ADD. These regions are responsible for impulse control and attention (what was i talking about?)
The way I look at the problem is messages that must get processed in these regions get slowed down and so the message queue for the whole brain gets out of whack -- sort of like a network where one machine processes messages slower thus slowing down the whole thing.
As to the theraputic action of ritalin (or other stimulant) the notion is it boosts neural activity in that region allowing the traffic to flow smoothly again.
Now whether the ritalin only boosts those cells in the frontal lobes *or* the rest of the brain too is something I'm still trying to find out...
I'd ask the leading question "which came first
acid-like filters in photoshop
or acid?"
Essentially, does our technology allow us to envision new things?
~OR~
Do drugs inspire new these new technologies?
And if these technologies could be considered to be analogous to a psychoative drug then how does that tie into the notion that evolution of conciousness throughout all organisims and throughout the history of humanity has been through the mechanism of consumption/use of 'psychoactive' substances by these organisms.
I.e. whatever molecule that caused some tarsir to 'get a little high' and modify it's conciousness over 100 million years ago which eventually lead us humans as the (socalled) peak of conciousness and
could lead to a future computer-created reality that is just as
psychoactive.
It's been my hope too that such as you described will be rapidly developed, but i phear the opposite sometimes; that 'people' just don't want/care about very much and the accelerating nature of technology will be ignored...
On the other hand, maybe the tech will present the opportunity for everyone to become a turnip... oh wait, tv is here already!
As stated in their IPO documents, they had revenue from 'products' and 'licensing' -- i can see them licensing some k-nifty things in the early days but what kind of 'products' did they sell to raise over $250k before 1995, and $325k during 98?
Visions of some k-razy t-shirt-on-a-chip scheme dance through my head:>
But seriously, has anyone heard about Transmeta from those 'early years'?
Joe Double-click is probably safer sticking with Napster.
After loading up 'gnotella' (now recommended instead of gnutella_v.56), freenet, blocks, and pheed (?) clients, I hate to admit it but all are not terribly 'newbie friendly'.
I'd argue the simplicity of napster is the key to its '20-million users'. That is a whole lot more than/.s 'audience' who might actually be inclined to do all the extra clkn&drgn needed to slip into these FS alternatives.
The end is nigh of course, eventually... but this brings up the question whether the success of public file sharing could falter simply because other big name desktop clients (ICQ, AIM, YM, MSM, etc.) rush out a new version with (oh-my-god) public file sharing -- perhaps with some 'small' restrictions, thus creating a few semi-controlled continents of file sharing.
Simply because they have the ez2use interface could FS be severely limited (think exponential network growth factors) for the generations of the future?
Only the U.S. justice system can tell us for sure, eh?
What about the notion that you don't actually 'buy a disk' you are buying a 'license to play' (too bad they don't sell a 'license to kill'!)?
It's not yours to do with as you will, as it were. Rather it seems that at the cross-roads between physical reality (and real goods) and the informational world of 'represented reality' (movies, music, etc.) things get squirrely and people are looking to either the past or the future for the answer -- and just end up being embittered in the present.
Not that I am defending the corporates...
= == ===... "Don't do oxytocin; it's a ghetto drug...", Bob Roberts...
cause people are starting to manifest mass effects of technology just like every good sci-fi is based upon (i'm sure you've read 100 such) -- but this is reality
yeah but they're talking to machines every day too
No:
this is a significantly different way (form/media) of humans to communicate -- it is like millions of people passing notes to each other -- which just isn't done -- this is a significant change for the people alive today. Becasue it is essentially free -- it is very different from the access to telephone technology hich took almost 100 years to permeate (and still like only 2/5 people in the world have ever made a phone call)
so in 1 year a society goes from no sms to epidemic (pandemic really) sms!
watch out america -- in 5 years there could be a billion message passing people out there -- talk about a ''communist'' threat!
I had the pleasure of meeting Jef and subsequently read his new book The Humane Interface.
Some of the subjects will ring like a bell to a lot of geeks around here. The way he lays it out is very lego-like (block by block). One of the best parts is the exploration of measuring the acutal ''efficiency'' of an interface -- finally you can say to the ''designer'' that there is more to UI design than ''personal taste'', rather you can determine the actual ''information efficiency'' of an UI. Works great in meetings and makes you seem like a rocket scientist!
Check it out: http://www.jefraskin.com/ Summary of The Humane Interface Part I: PROBLEMS WITH THE GUIs WE HAVE Part II: WHAT INTERFACES SHOULD HAVE
TOC Highlights: Chapter Two: Cognetics and the Locus of Attention 2-1 Ergonomics and Cognetics: What We Can and Cannot Do 2-2 Cognitive Conscious and Cognitive Unconscious 2-3 Locus of Attention 2-3-1 Formation of Habits 2-3-2 Execution of Simultaneous Tasks 2-3-3 Singularity of the Locus of Attention 2-3-4 Origins of the Locus of Attention 2-3-5 Exploitation of the Single Locus of Attention 2-3-6 Resumption of Interrupted Work
Chapter Four: Quantification 4-1 Quantitative Analyses of Interfaces 4-2 GOMS Keystroke-Level Model 4-2-1 Interface Timings 4-2-2 GOMS Calculations 4-2-3 GOMS Calculation Examples 4-3 Measurement of Interface Efficiency 4-3-1 Efficiency of Hal's Interfaces 4-3-2 Other Solutions for Hal's Interface 4-4 Fitts' Law and Hick's Law 4-4-1 Fitts' Law 4-4-2 Hick's Law
Even Wu was pretty dull. I mean, quick -- give me one personality attribute of Wu. Was he ingoing/outgoing? Loving or cold? Family oriented or distant? Good at business or poor? I guess we know he's adventurous, since he went to the ringworld, but what else? He's as shallow as a cardboard cutout.
As always, one has to choice to see the upside in things rather than the downside. To that point, I would argue that Louis Wu, being 200 years old, could be looked at as a study of a character who has explored himself so much, the only characteristics that still manifest would seem pretty dull.
Think about yourself growing up, and how often you've learned new things about yourself. Louis has been there, and done that. He had like 10-15 careers. Careers! Not jobs.
But then again, there were some other Niven novels which weren't filled with post-modernized characters, and they did seem to be a little thin...:^)
I'm just thankful that there is a literary outlet where more than just the nature of the character is relevant. Sci-Fi is about stimulating your mind beyond what you get from an examination of human psychology (a non-sci-fi story), and that is often a fabulously novel kind of view one that lets you see things no one has seen before.
B.S. Hall -> Aspiring Professional Futurist Coming Soon: The Hyperactive Network of Knowledge
A large part of the fear that Bill (and Ted) express comes from looking at the nature of exponential growth. To illustrate, I'm reminded of a funny joke Ralph Merkle (nanotechnologist) makes when people ask him about the state of "progress in nanotechnology", to which he always replies "We're at the Knee of the Curve." The joke is that with an exponential-rate growth curve, every point is the "knee". Exponential growth is no laughing matter. Moore's Law has been a reality for decades and since Gordon Moore first stated in 1965 transistor technology has increased about 8 million fold. And next year it'll be 16 million fold. That's a lot. Bill (and lots of others) look down the road to "30 Years From Now" at which point we'll have seen a 8,796,093,022,208 fold improvement since 1965.
Now we connect this exponential growth to human growth: I was watching on "the nature of things" how Australapithicine man was stuck with the high-technology of STONE KNIVES for 1 million years. That is slow evolution, but in the last 10,000 years the world's population has gone from 1 Million to 6 Billion. This could only be supported by massive advances in technology -- namely agriculture and trade. This evolution of technology is what scares Bill (and Ted). This figure of "30 Years" is sometimes referred to as "The Singularity" (coined by Vernor Vinge I believe) where we can no longer predict what will happen.
Everything that humans invent is subject to change, and in the coming years we will no doubt see changes in things like
What will an 8 trillion fold increase in technology give us? No one can know but its safe to say it *could* be very bad, or it could be very good. Whatever it is we can expect that the foundations of our society will be shaken over and over and over again. Will this drive some people nuts? Probably. Do nutty people do bad things? Sometimes. Just look at James Bond; every one has an evil genius out to destroy the world. Given an open source nanotechnology replicator, could Nutty Joe (Black Hat) Hacker write some nasty code that gets by all the filters/defenses in their BreadMaker/Nano-instantiator?
There is a lot to phear but a lot to hope too. Personally one of the greatest fears I have is of artificial resistance to change from entrenched businesses. It doesn't pay to support a technology that obsoletes you (conspiratorists, think of whats been alleged about the Oil Industry and new energy sources or the Pharmaceutical Industry and a "cure for cancer") so there can be a lot of resistance which ultimately restricts the 'forces of good' to develop the safety of the technology as quickly as possible, and allows the free radikals to operate in a world without the philosophical precepts of safety. It is my hope that we'll see a shift to a business model that includes its own demise -- I learned this idea a long time ago at an IETF conference where they were starting a new working group (HTTP-NG maybe) and one of the first things discussed was its wrap-up!
If we don't consider the end of our forseeable future, perhaps we deserve to have robots with laser's in their eyes to wipe out this "annoying species".
I'll leave you with one other hopeful thing I've learned. The awesome advances in Computer development has only been outstripped by one thing: human's ability to absorb the incredible change and then bitch about how 256MB for a video card is "so yesterday". B^)
Briefly, this notion of community that the author argues is part of evolution is supported by Richard Dawkins analysis of the evolution of the DNA in "The Selfish Gene" (http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/selfish.h tm).
Most notably is the notion of the "Prisoner's Dilemma", which shows that the most effective path for success of a gene (or of an entire organism or society) is co-operation. Nice explanation and applet at http://www.midwinter.com/~piaw/p risoner/prisoner.htm.
Most people commonly think that the only way is strong competition and the "survival of the fittest", when in fact there is so much evidence against this.
The computer community and the whole 'open-source thang' has always seemed to be in tune with this. Thankfully.
Counter-suit launched, citing prior-use of both the 'whole word' "Brian" AND the individual letters (used in any combination/permutation).
A class-action suit by a 'large number' of people with the letter 'B' in their name has been launched against Koosh Inc., a potato-focused organization.
The plaintiffs seek "One Billllllion Dollars!" in damages.
A spokesman, also known by the name "Brian" said in a prepared statement, "It's a frightening time when people like this Koosh Kook can infringe on the letter-rights of millions (if not billlllions) of people out there. We fully expect to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law and the Billllllion Dollars we plan to spend on launching a special website that visciously attacks any using any of these letters. If we're lucky, research we plan to do in Robots with lasers in their eyes will pay off and then instead of even sending email, we'll simply send in the robots to do their job."
The lack of good 'computer' films is especially apparent to someone like myself who's been stuck between computers and film for the past ten years. As a struggling filmmaker, my dream is to make a 'computer' movie that is both amazingly cool and not horribly stupid. This kinda leads to the same issue of sci-fi in the cinema and its rather shotty success (success being defined as something not stupid).
This is my dream and maybe one day it will all come together as I believe that it is possible to make a good film about computer stuff, and maybe even have a 'sorta mainstream' crowd not hate it too! Of course, this would entail creating at least two parallel plotlines which both 'groups' could enjoy (kinda like a disney film having an 'adult' story among the kid story -- I'm talking about having a 'geek' story among the kid, er, mainstream story).
I could use some feedback on this though -- what kinda support from 'the community' might there be? Could the fervor of a 'blair witch' be harnessed? Support would go a long way to making this kinda movie happen. Imagine a movie you could walk out of and be really proud to be a 'geek', and your mom could see it and 'understand' (at least a little) and be proud of you too?!
That's my dream. Maybe some of you share the dream too.
If there is a big enough response I'll put together an 'Ask Slashdot' on what kind of 'computer' film/.ers would like to see... nanotech? linux? future? past? comedy? drama? "Send more compilers";^)? Open-Source?!? Films have been made in far stranger ways if you can imagine...
And the winner for best picture goes to... Slashdot the Film!
autism n : (psychiatry) an abnormal absorption with the self; marked by communication disorders and short attention span and inability to treat others as people -- dict.org
When I saw the slashdot item on "Shadow Syndromes" (which I presume is the original thrust for this thread) there was a definite feeling of "this makes a lot of sense"...
Understanding my own mind and the minds of 'all of them normal people out there' has been driving me for many years. My ad hoc research in the topic includes looking at my cousin who *is* technically autistic and myself who has been diagnosed with 'moderate to severe ADHD'...
Though Bruce is right about the distributed nature of the tools we 'geekz' use, I think the key thing here is that 'we' definately get along better with other 'geeks' than with 'normals'. So I don't look at is as a problem with communication in general, but rather (and all too often) the desire to communicate 'too much' information. Joe dbl-click isn't used to the highly intense stream of communication that 'geeks' routinely shoot at each other, and if you try (and fail, time a time again) to talk to someone, eventually you stop trying.
Moreover, the geek/autism connection seems to be more about being sensitive to the way 'normals' communicate and the impact that sensitivity has on the 'geek' and their desire to communicate.
How does this all interelate? Well recent research on autism is looking at hormones produced by the stomache of all places which moderate an individual's view on the world.
If you're interested drop me a line and I'll dig up more infoz from my hyperactive mind. And for those of you who know the old "Sy Sperling -- not just the president; I'm a client" thing, you might want to do some research on the hormone OXYTOCIN which seems to be connected to all this stuff...
P.S. tracking down "Shadow Syndromes" lead me to another book on Amazon (those who bought this book also bought...) "Highly Sensitive People" which isn't the best but does lay another framework for understanding the 'geek' communication issue.
p.p.s Hi Bruce -- it was very cool meeting you last week at Foresight... : )
The societal acceptance of new technology has always been a keen interest of mine.
From all the books and documentaries and such I've seen the one quote that stood out the most was about the telephone:
One day, EVERY CITY will have ''A'' telephone...(yes that would mean one phone...)
And almost as good as that was from a speech by the President of NTT that within the next (i think it was) 5 years they'll have x hundred million new cell phone subcribers and of those 3-5 MILLION would be for pets!
The future is gonna get wacky quicker than you can spit. All hail hyper-capitalism!
Sorry I can't recall the sources for these right now... but if anyone else can please email. Thanks.
Factoids --> Towards a "Complete Record"
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The Factoid
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Oh data, mine... (dbl entendre for slashers w/o coffee++)
I've often thought about the concept of a 'complete record'.
Essentially having access to such data and the ability to analyse it in (more or less) real time (by more and more powerful computers) changes the nature of life to one where one's 'next step' can be 'forecasted' (probabilities of future action/reaction based on historical data).
A good look at the whole notion of 'complete record' is one's on historical email archive. If you're a 'keeper' (someone who keeps all your mail) then one day you'll have the ability to (very) easily mine your data. Frankly, I keep all the junk mail I get in hopes of using it to populate an anti-spam thingi...
But there lies the rub with 'complete record' (really any level of keeping a lot of history) -- that is what do you really want to do with it? Short term utility can be very high (where did I go today again?) but long term is low (where did I see that picasso painting 25 years ago?).
What could be interesting is an algorithm to ascertain the utility of data based on age and other factors.
> ADD == Time Blindness That's an excellent description of the 'internal feeling'... I was dx 'moderate to severe' ADHD 2 years ago when I was 27. In my research, the most positive light I've found is the concept that ADD/ADHD (it really is a poor acronym, but slightly better than "Minimal Brain Damage" as it used to be called) represents the same 'skill set' that used to be attributed to the 'hunters' in a community (see Beyond ADD : Hunting for Reasons in the Past & Present &c. at amazon or the like). The connection with the 'multi-tasking' center really hits home, especially if you look at it as 'hyper-archical information navigation' -- I often find myself with 50+ windows open having 'shift-clicked' to go down multiple parallel threads. The third trait I was interested in pointing out for response is the idea that ADDers have a strong affinity to other ADDled folks... It turns out that 4 of my closest and oldest friends are all clinical ADD/ADHD (we were friends years b4 we'd even heard of the big 'A'). If there are other/.ers out there with "ADD" who are interested in discussing (as actual action would be nearly impossible;^) some kind of community creation, I'd be game and as a resource my domain might be useful.
Slashdot Mirror
(ahem) "doing the math", one week of 1G constant acceleration will get you 182,891,520,000 km (or about 30 thousand times further than pluto!) My math may be off (:!) but you get the idea! (and yes, this may not indclude decerlartion... but still! Anyone who is math-enabled, please have at it!)
A friend metioned this as the original economic motive behind the winter gift activity.
Because each group had some specialty, by gifting your surplus out, everyone is better covered for the rest of long winter.
It makes sense.
Maybe open/free source software will help us get through an upcoming computer/economic 'winter'?
This is the Toy i want for Xmas -- with the X10 wireless cam!!!!
After my dot-com employer options went to ten times market price(!), I realized the shit I put up with was worse than contributing to a charity.
Where is the OpenSource Charity Job Board. I'd be plenty happy to earn 20-25% less and not feel like I'm working at a f---edcompany but rather doing something to make the world a nicer place. OSDN/Charity Now!
Please give generously.
Do you check out Deja on deja before you buy?
too recursively surreal for me!
.Just a brief note about why people with AD(H)D can take a central nervous system stimulant like methyphenidate (ritalin) and it has the reverse effect of creating 'calm'.
The results of studies on people with ADD using PET scans (Positron Emission Tomography) showed that part of the brain was actually working *less* than other parts of the brain. The PET scan is able to detect the use of glucose by cells and the scans showed that regions in the frontal lobes were less active in ADD sufferers than in the people without ADD. These regions are responsible for impulse control and attention (what was i talking about?)
The way I look at the problem is messages that must get processed in these regions get slowed down and so the message queue for the whole brain gets out of whack -- sort of like a network where one machine processes messages slower thus slowing down the whole thing.
As to the theraputic action of ritalin (or other stimulant) the notion is it boosts neural activity in that region allowing the traffic to flow smoothly again.
Now whether the ritalin only boosts those cells in the frontal lobes *or* the rest of the brain too is something I'm still trying to find out...
Just my 2 cents.
-
-
Further to your these greate points,
I'd ask the leading question "which came first
acid-like filters in photoshop
or acid?"
Essentially, does our technology allow us to envision new things?
~OR~
Do drugs inspire new these new technologies?
And if these technologies could be considered to be analogous to a psychoative drug then how does that tie into the notion that evolution of conciousness throughout all organisims and throughout the history of humanity has been through the mechanism of consumption/use of 'psychoactive' substances by these organisms.
I.e. whatever molecule that caused some tarsir to 'get a little high' and modify it's conciousness over 100 million years ago which eventually lead us humans as the (socalled) peak of conciousness and
could lead to a future computer-created reality that is just as
psychoactive.
Too much MAPS for me!
Nice stuff mr. blade.
:>
:>
you have evidently read some good nano-fiction
It's been my hope too that such as you described will be rapidly developed, but i phear the opposite sometimes; that 'people' just don't want/care about very much and the accelerating nature of technology will be ignored...
On the other hand, maybe the tech will present the opportunity for everyone to become a turnip... oh wait, tv is here already!
:> email me if you like for further discussion
As stated in their IPO documents, they had revenue from 'products' and 'licensing' -- i can see them licensing some k-nifty things in the early days but what kind of 'products' did they sell to raise over $250k before 1995, and $325k during 98?
:>
Visions of some k-razy t-shirt-on-a-chip scheme dance through my head
But seriously, has anyone heard about Transmeta from those 'early years'?
-------
Joe Double-click is probably safer sticking with Napster.
/.s 'audience' who might actually be inclined to do all the extra clkn&drgn needed to slip into these FS alternatives.
After loading up 'gnotella' (now recommended instead of gnutella_v.56), freenet, blocks, and pheed (?) clients, I hate to admit it but all are not terribly 'newbie friendly'.
I'd argue the simplicity of napster is the key to its '20-million users'. That is a whole lot more than
The end is nigh of course, eventually... but this brings up the question whether the success of public file sharing could falter simply because other big name desktop clients (ICQ, AIM, YM, MSM, etc.) rush out a new version with (oh-my-god) public file sharing -- perhaps with some 'small' restrictions, thus creating a few semi-controlled continents of file sharing.
Simply because they have the ez2use interface could FS be severely limited (think exponential network growth factors) for the generations of the future?
Only the U.S. justice system can tell us for sure, eh?
What about the notion that you don't actually 'buy a disk' you are buying a 'license to play' (too bad they don't sell a 'license to kill'!)?
... "Don't do oxytocin; it's a ghetto drug...", Bob Roberts ...
It's not yours to do with as you will, as it were. Rather it seems that at the cross-roads between physical reality (and real goods) and the informational world of 'represented reality' (movies, music, etc.) things get squirrely and people are looking to either the past or the future for the answer -- and just end up being embittered in the present.
Not that I am defending the corporates...
=
==
===
'' communist '' threat!
Some of the subjects will ring like a bell to a lot of geeks around here. The way he lays it out is very lego-like (block by block). One of the best parts is the exploration of measuring the acutal ''efficiency'' of an interface -- finally you can say to the ''designer'' that there is more to UI design than ''personal taste'', rather you can determine the actual ''information efficiency'' of an UI. Works great in meetings and makes you seem like a rocket scientist!
Check it out:
http://www.jefraskin.com/
Summary of The Humane Interface Part I: PROBLEMS WITH THE GUIs WE HAVE Part II: WHAT INTERFACES SHOULD HAVE
TOC Highlights: Chapter Two: Cognetics and the Locus of Attention
2-1 Ergonomics and Cognetics: What We Can and Cannot Do
2-2 Cognitive Conscious and Cognitive Unconscious
2-3 Locus of Attention
2-3-1 Formation of Habits
2-3-2 Execution of Simultaneous Tasks
2-3-3 Singularity of the Locus of Attention
2-3-4 Origins of the Locus of Attention
2-3-5 Exploitation of the Single Locus of Attention
2-3-6 Resumption of Interrupted Work
Chapter Four: Quantification
4-1 Quantitative Analyses of Interfaces
4-2 GOMS Keystroke-Level Model
4-2-1 Interface Timings
4-2-2 GOMS Calculations
4-2-3 GOMS Calculation Examples
4-3 Measurement of Interface Efficiency
4-3-1 Efficiency of Hal's Interfaces
4-3-2 Other Solutions for Hal's Interface
4-4 Fitts' Law and Hick's Law
4-4-1 Fitts' Law
4-4-2 Hick's Law
Even Wu was pretty dull. I mean, quick -- give me one personality attribute of Wu. Was he ingoing/outgoing? Loving or cold? Family oriented or distant? Good at business or poor? I guess we know he's adventurous, since he went to the ringworld, but what else? He's as shallow as a cardboard cutout.
:^)
As always, one has to choice to see the upside in things rather than the downside. To that point, I would argue that Louis Wu, being 200 years old, could be looked at as a study of a character who has explored himself so much, the only characteristics that still manifest would seem pretty dull.
Think about yourself growing up, and how often you've learned new things about yourself. Louis has been there, and done that. He had like 10-15 careers. Careers! Not jobs.
But then again, there were some other Niven novels which weren't filled with post-modernized characters, and they did seem to be a little thin...
I'm just thankful that there is a literary outlet where more than just the nature of the character is relevant. Sci-Fi is about stimulating your mind beyond what you get from an examination of human psychology (a non-sci-fi story), and that is often a fabulously novel kind of view one that lets you see things no one has seen before.
B.S. Hall -> Aspiring Professional Futurist
Coming Soon: The Hyperactive Network of Knowledge
A large part of the fear that Bill (and Ted) express comes from looking at the nature of exponential growth. To illustrate, I'm reminded of a funny joke Ralph Merkle (nanotechnologist) makes when people ask him about the state of "progress in nanotechnology", to which he always replies "We're at the Knee of the Curve." The joke is that with an exponential-rate growth curve, every point is the "knee". Exponential growth is no laughing matter. Moore's Law has been a reality for decades and since Gordon Moore first stated in 1965 transistor technology has increased about 8 million fold. And next year it'll be 16 million fold. That's a lot. Bill (and lots of others) look down the road to "30 Years From Now" at which point we'll have seen a 8,796,093,022,208 fold improvement since 1965.
Now we connect this exponential growth to human growth: I was watching on "the nature of things" how Australapithicine man was stuck with the high-technology of STONE KNIVES for 1 million years. That is slow evolution, but in the last 10,000 years the world's population has gone from 1 Million to 6 Billion. This could only be supported by massive advances in technology -- namely agriculture and trade. This evolution of technology is what scares Bill (and Ted). This figure of "30 Years" is sometimes referred to as "The Singularity" (coined by Vernor Vinge I believe) where we can no longer predict what will happen.
Everything that humans invent is subject to change, and in the coming years we will no doubt see changes in things like
- Computers
- Networks
- Medicine
- Business
- Law
- Government
- War
- Everything Else
What will an 8 trillion fold increase in technology give us? No one can know but its safe to say it *could* be very bad , or it could be very good. Whatever it is we can expect that the foundations of our society will be shaken over and over and over again. Will this drive some people nuts? Probably. Do nutty people do bad things? Sometimes. Just look at James Bond; every one has an evil genius out to destroy the world. Given an open source nanotechnology replicator, could Nutty Joe (Black Hat) Hacker write some nasty code that gets by all the filters/defenses in their BreadMaker/Nano-instantiator?There is a lot to phear but a lot to hope too. Personally one of the greatest fears I have is of artificial resistance to change from entrenched businesses. It doesn't pay to support a technology that obsoletes you (conspiratorists, think of whats been alleged about the Oil Industry and new energy sources or the Pharmaceutical Industry and a "cure for cancer") so there can be a lot of resistance which ultimately restricts the 'forces of good' to develop the safety of the technology as quickly as possible, and allows the free radikals to operate in a world without the philosophical precepts of safety. It is my hope that we'll see a shift to a business model that includes its own demise -- I learned this idea a long time ago at an IETF conference where they were starting a new working group (HTTP-NG maybe) and one of the first things discussed was its wrap-up!
If we don't consider the end of our forseeable future, perhaps we deserve to have robots with laser's in their eyes to wipe out this "annoying species".
I'll leave you with one other hopeful thing I've learned. The awesome advances in Computer development has only been outstripped by one thing: human's ability to absorb the incredible change and then bitch about how 256MB for a video card is "so yesterday". B^)
Briefly, this notion of community that the author argues is part of evolution is supported by Richard Dawkins analysis of the evolution of the DNA in "The Selfish Gene" (http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/selfish.h tm).
Most notably is the notion of the "Prisoner's Dilemma", which shows that the most effective path for success of a gene (or of an entire organism or society) is co-operation. Nice explanation and applet at http://www.midwinter.com/~piaw/p risoner/prisoner.htm.
Most people commonly think that the only way is strong competition and the "survival of the fittest", when in fact there is so much evidence against this.
The computer community and the whole 'open-source thang' has always seemed to be in tune with this. Thankfully.
A class-action suit by a 'large number' of people with the letter 'B' in their name has been launched against Koosh Inc., a potato-focused organization.
The plaintiffs seek "One Billllllion Dollars!" in damages.
A spokesman, also known by the name "Brian" said in a prepared statement, "It's a frightening time when people like this Koosh Kook can infringe on the letter-rights of millions (if not billlllions) of people out there. We fully expect to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law and the Billllllion Dollars we plan to spend on launching a special website that visciously attacks any using any of these letters. If we're lucky, research we plan to do in Robots with lasers in their eyes will pay off and then instead of even sending email, we'll simply send in the robots to do their job."
Koosh Inc. made no comment.
This is my dream and maybe one day it will all come together as I believe that it is possible to make a good film about computer stuff, and maybe even have a 'sorta mainstream' crowd not hate it too! Of course, this would entail creating at least two parallel plotlines which both 'groups' could enjoy (kinda like a disney film having an 'adult' story among the kid story -- I'm talking about having a 'geek' story among the kid, er, mainstream story).
I could use some feedback on this though -- what kinda support from 'the community' might there be? Could the fervor of a 'blair witch' be harnessed? Support would go a long way to making this kinda movie happen. Imagine a movie you could walk out of and be really proud to be a 'geek', and your mom could see it and 'understand' (at least a little) and be proud of you too?!
That's my dream. Maybe some of you share the dream too.
If there is a big enough response I'll put together an 'Ask Slashdot' on what kind of 'computer' film
When I saw the slashdot item on "Shadow Syndromes" (which I presume is the original thrust for this thread) there was a definite feeling of "this makes a lot of sense"...
Understanding my own mind and the minds of 'all of them normal people out there' has been driving me for many years. My ad hoc research in the topic includes looking at my cousin who *is* technically autistic and myself who has been diagnosed with 'moderate to severe ADHD'...
Though Bruce is right about the distributed nature of the tools we 'geekz' use, I think the key thing here is that 'we' definately get along better with other 'geeks' than with 'normals'. So I don't look at is as a problem with communication in general, but rather (and all too often) the desire to communicate 'too much' information. Joe dbl-click isn't used to the highly intense stream of communication that 'geeks' routinely shoot at each other, and if you try (and fail, time a time again) to talk to someone, eventually you stop trying.
Moreover, the geek/autism connection seems to be more about being sensitive to the way 'normals' communicate and the impact that sensitivity has on the 'geek' and their desire to communicate.
How does this all interelate? Well recent research on autism is looking at hormones produced by the stomache of all places which moderate an individual's view on the world.
If you're interested drop me a line and I'll dig up more infoz from my hyperactive mind. And for those of you who know the old "Sy Sperling -- not just the president; I'm a client" thing, you might want to do some research on the hormone OXYTOCIN which seems to be connected to all this stuff...
P.S. tracking down "Shadow Syndromes" lead me to another book on Amazon (those who bought this book also bought...) "Highly Sensitive People" which isn't the best but does lay another framework for understanding the 'geek' communication issue.
p.p.s Hi Bruce -- it was very cool meeting you last week at Foresight... : )
From all the books and documentaries and such I've seen the one quote that stood out the most was about the telephone:
And almost as good as that was from a speech by the President of NTT that within the next (i think it was) 5 years they'll have x hundred million new cell phone subcribers and of those 3-5 MILLION would be for pets!
The future is gonna get wacky quicker than you can spit. All hail hyper-capitalism!
Sorry I can't recall the sources for these right now... but if anyone else can please email. Thanks.
Oh data, mine... (dbl entendre for slashers w/o coffee++)
I've often thought about the concept of a 'complete record'.
Essentially having access to such data and the ability to analyse it in (more or less) real
time (by more and more powerful computers) changes the nature of life to one
where one's 'next step' can be 'forecasted' (probabilities of future
action/reaction based on historical data).
A good look at the whole notion of 'complete record' is one's on historical
email archive. If you're a 'keeper' (someone who keeps all your mail) then
one day you'll have the ability to (very) easily mine your data. Frankly, I
keep all the junk mail I get in hopes of using it to populate an anti-spam
thingi...
But there lies the rub with 'complete record' (really any level of keeping a
lot of history) -- that is what do you really want to do with it? Short
term utility can be very high (where did I go today again?) but long term is low
(where did I see that picasso painting 25 years ago?).
What could be interesting is an algorithm to ascertain the utility of data
based on age and other factors.
IMHO
> ADD == Time Blindness That's an excellent description of the 'internal feeling'... /.ers out there with "ADD" who are interested in discussing (as actual action would be nearly impossible ;^) some kind of community creation, I'd be game and as a resource my domain might be useful.
I was dx 'moderate to severe' ADHD 2 years ago when I was 27.
In my research, the most positive light I've found is the concept that ADD/ADHD (it really is a poor acronym, but slightly better than "Minimal Brain Damage" as it used to be called) represents the same 'skill set' that used to be attributed to the 'hunters' in a community (see Beyond ADD : Hunting for Reasons in the Past & Present &c. at amazon or the like).
The connection with the 'multi-tasking' center really hits home, especially if you look at it as 'hyper-archical information navigation' -- I often find myself with 50+ windows open having 'shift-clicked' to go down multiple parallel threads.
The third trait I was interested in pointing out for response is the idea that ADDers have a strong affinity to other ADDled folks... It turns out that 4 of my closest and oldest friends are all clinical ADD/ADHD (we were friends years b4 we'd even heard of the big 'A').
If there are other